DonPedro wrote:it is the chipset that provides the 133mhz setting. afaik the m599lmr uses the sis530, so the only thing you got to know is how to set the jumpers for selecting the various fsb/sdram speeds (100, 112, 124, 133). whether the pcchips board can stand it is a question of manufacturing quality.

I may have to try updating the BIOS then. The m599lmr has an early version of the AMI CPU PnP Setup util. There aren't any jumpers. It's only listing 60, 66, 75, 83, 95, & 100Mhz right now. Multipliers are 1.5-5.5, but I figure the 2x would work as a 6x.

DonPedro wrote:in most cases you won't succeed with onboard-vga enabled. only super7dude who has a ga-5smm was able to run the board at 133mhz with onboard-vga enabled. all others who tried it failed.

Yeah, that's why I installed the ATI card. Also, since it steals main memory, the PCI card will help allow more RAM to be available. I may try dropping it down to 64MB and see if it will still encode properly.

DonPedro wrote:you wrote: "Using the Celeron Mobile(P4 based) which has 256k L2 isn't really any slower than the P4's 512k cache." if these cpus have the same core and only differ in cache-size than I would say that this hints towards mencoder's data to be worked with fits almost into 256k cache.

There are probably some kind of differences in the way the cache is use(4way vs 8way) or something. The regular P4 based Celerons only have 128k L2. Plus, the mobiles overclock a whole lot better than the regular ones. I don't have any available to test tho. I'm building a dual Xeon system which will allow hyperthreading on both cpus, which will allow me to encode 4 streams at a time if I want to. I may grab a K6-2+ and see if it works similar with the 128k L2 vs the 256k L2 at the same speed. That would probably be the best bet.

DonPedro wrote:so far our bench adventure has revealed that programs which rely only on raw cpu-power show no improvement when one switches from 6x100 to 4.5x133. cpu and ondie-cache are both run at 600mhz. the results are equal. just look at the many charts we have produced so far earlier in this thread. the benches that have grey background will show this effect.

Correct, but mencoder is a streaming app that needs new data on a constant basis. It's not like some programs that only need to work on a small amount of data at a time. That's why the 133fsb makes such a difference. The faster you can feed it the better the results. Also, it has to push the data out. re-encoding a movie at these speeds can take a long time(about a full day for a 2hr movie). I don't really intend to do much encoding with this system. It was more of a test. Anyway, in some situations, the fsb is probably irrelevant once the data is loaded into the cpu. Depends on the program.

Well, I tried to overclock the old K6-3/400 again. I was trying to go 4x133 instead of the current 3.5x133. No go. No matter what voltage I tried, I couldn't even get it to post. I know, I could try stting the multiplier lower. However, I had run it a 4x112 for a while on another machine, and I think it's much faster with the higher fsb. Now, I think I might try one of the K6-2+'s I saw. Has anyone tried ordering one of them yet?

Super7Dude wrote:hey larrystotler Welcome to K6Plus!! Nice to read from a new face! I have also wondered about Linux... don't know too much about it though but i have a few live CDs.

Glad to have found this place. I've been dabbling in it for about 8 years. It's very stable, and it's a whole lot easier to install these days then it was back then. Of course, not having a high speed connection during most of that was a pain. Of course, there are lots of advantages: No viruses, no spyware, very few system crashes, excellent hardware support, especially for older stuff.

Super7Dude wrote:I have found a K6-III+ 450APZ (1.7v core) that reaches 533MHz at stock voltage. but it can't reach 600MHz stable even at 2.2v I also managed to find another GA-5SMM in my box of old parts Maybe it can reach 133 stable as well.. It has black PS/2 ports rather than the purple and green ones on my current rev1.2 board.

I've had good success overclocking over the years. Haven't lost a chip to it yet. I've got a Celeron Mobile 2.2 running at 2.93Ghz. This was my first real heavy K6 type overclock. I just never had any. I did manage to get another GA-5SMM board from another compaq. Now I just need to flash the BIOS to the Gigabyte, and hope for the best. Then grab ne of those k6-2+'s and go to town.

I know you guys have done a lot of benchmarking, but I still feel that front side bus speed with a lower multiplier is much better than a high mulitpler and lower FSB. Case in point:

I have a Dell Precision Workstation 450 with 1 2.67Ghz P4 Xeon, 533Mhz FSB. My friend has a Dell Precision 470 with 2 2.8Ghz P4 Xeon 64bit, 800Mhz fsb. We've done some testing, and my system(even 133Mhz slower) is about 33% slower than his at video re-encoding. His chips have 1MB L2 and mine has 512k L2. Another guy has an Athlon64 3000+ overclocked from 1.8Ghz to 2.3Ghz, memory overclocked from 400Mhz to 426Mhz. His system is about 25% faster than the 2.8. However, the Xeons have the advantage with the Hyperthreading were we can run 2 encodings at the same time while his can't(or I can run something multi-threaded like x264). So, mine ends up being about 25% faster than the Athlon64 because of that advantage. So, it really comes down to what you intend to do with your system. For the $125 I have in my system, I could have gotten something close to the Athlon64, but my system is better for me because of the hyperthreading. Also, I can add another chip later and double my performance whereas the Athlon64 is stuck at 1 cpu. Of course I have to have enough work for it to do as well. Keep in mind that I have no graphical desktop on my system as well, so I can't even test anything like that.

Edit: Upon finishing the Hyperthreading testing, I found out that my slower FSB hurts my results more than previously expected. I get about 20% increase in frame rates using hyperthreading, not 100% like testing on the 2.8 system with the 800Mhz fsb showed. So, once again, FSB matters more in this instance than processor speed. Expandability wins out over the Athlon64 since I can go dual core.

then you should definitely read the whole thread again, the 133fsb/ram at 33pci capability is/was known from the start of this thread. whether it actually would work and how to achieve stability and max out the speed is what the thread digs into thoroughly.

I was able to obtain 2 different 512mb modules (mdt, kingston). the board asus p5s-vm was able to boot into windows without a problem, but only reported 256mb each.

I also tested the modules with an asus p5a - test failed completely from the beginning, and tested with a ga-5ax board - counted to 1024mb, startet to boot into windows, shortly after switching into graphic mode I got a bluescreen error, which is just a natural thing, since it is impossible to address memory that is just not there.

I then proceeded by looking into the sis530-specsheet and compared that to what wpcredit reveals. as a matter of fact the bios routine does not set 1 bit accordingly to what it should be when the machine is fired up.

I then contacted jan steunebrink and asked him to look into this. he replied that this is something interesting and that he is ready to investigate this. after I provided all the information I have about the sis530 chipset to him, he started work on it but unfortunately up to today has not found the location in the bios where the memory settings are managed and stored. but he will not give up. I think we finally are going to have 512mb modules working in a socket7-mainboard.

That would be excellent, if the BIOS can be modified to understand the 512MB modules correctly. I'm in process of building a machine that will need 512MB, and although I could certainly stick with two 256MB modules, I'd rather do a single larger one instead, if anyone suggest it is perfectly doable.

Thanks for your efforts, and you as well, Jan! I have benefitted from Jan's work in the past as well, so never think that what you have done is all for naught.